Manchester Arena bomber’s brother found guilty of plot

LONDON: The homegrown terrorist brother of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi has been found guilty of murdering 22 people and injuring hundreds more in the “cruel and cowardly” attack.

Hashem Abedi was not present at the conclusion of his seven-week trial as he continued to attempt to evade responsibility for the carnage of May 22 2017. Families of some of the victims in court two of the Old Bailey wept as a jury found him guilty of 22 counts of murder, attempted murder and conspiring with his brother to cause explosions after less than five hours of deliberations.

It came as the senior investigating officer said Hashem was “every bit as responsible” as his older brother — and may have been the senior figure in the plot, with intentions for further bloodshed around the world — even though he was in Libya when Salman detonated the bomb.

Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Barraclough said: “If you look at these two brothers, they are not kids caught in the headlights of something they don’t understand. These two men are the real deal, these are proper jihadis — you do not walk into a space like the Manchester Arena and kill yourself with an enormous bomb like that, taking 22 innocent lives with you, if you are not a proper jihadist.

“He was with his brother throughout the entire process of making this explosive and building this bomb, I believe he provided encouragement right up to the end. This was all about the sick ideology of Islamic State and this desire for martyrdom.”

And he said he was certain that Hashem took a final four-minute phone call from Salman on the evening the bomb went off. Barraclough, who was assigned to the case within an hour of the attack, said: “At that point he (Salman) is getting that last-minute inspiration (from Hashem) — that last-minute advice — and he’s telling him what he’s about to do. These two brothers are literally hand in glove in this process.”

Prosecutor Duncan Penny QC had said that Hashem, 22, was “just as guilty” as his brother of the attack after an Ariana Grande concert which killed 22 men, women and children aged between eight and 51. From January 2017, the brothers set about buying nuts and screws for shrapnel and ordering chemicals from Amazon to make the homemade TATP explosives, with unwitting help from friends and relatives.

Meanwhile, Salman visited convicted Islamic State recruiter Abdulraouf Abdallah in prison and even spoke to him on a mobile phone as the plot took shape.

The brothers used 11 mobile phones in five months — some in play for as little as two hours — and used a variety of runaround vehicles.